"Grenade" is the second single from Bruno Mars' album "Doo-Wops & Hooligans".
It was first released as a promotional single on the famous iTunes store.
The idea of the song came after one session in which the singer was shown a song with similar lyrics by the producer Benny Blanco.
The song was written by Andrew Wyatt, Bruno Mars, Ari Levine, Claude Kelly, Philip Lawrence and Brody Brown. The process of writing it took several months.
It was produced by The Smeezingtons as the song was re-arranged and stripped down to the actual form.
The pop and R&B ballad is played in D minor and and it has 108 beats per minute.
The piano sound was created in the Fantom, the synth sounds with Virus, while the bass was played by Brody Brown and the keyboards by Levine and Bruno Mars.
The main theme of the song is unrequited love, the regret of loss and the ingratitude of the loved one.
"Grenade" was released as digital download on September 28th, 2010.
It was very well received by the music critics, whom rated it four and a half stars out of five. It has been compared to Michael Jackson's "Dirty Diana", because of their similarities and also because the singer used to cover it very often.
The song has also been described as "nothing short of explosive" and Mars' vocal performance was praised.
The music video was directed by NABIL, and it features the singer dragging a piano through the streets in search of the loved one. It was released on November 19th and it received the critics' acclaim.
It gained Bruno Mars three nominations at the MTV Video Music Awards: one for "Video Of The Year", one for "Best Male Video" and another for "Best Pop Video".
The song itself was nominated at the Grammy Awards for "Song Of The Year", "Best Pop Solo Performance" and "Record Of The Year".
The singer performed it live at the 2011 ceremony of the same awards.
"Grenade" topped the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, and also the US Mainstream Top 40 and US Adult Top 40 charts in the United States, as well as the UK Singles Chart and many others throughout the world.
The single sold almost six million copies in the United States where it was certified five times platinum, the same as in Australia.
"Grenade" was a breakthrough song for Bruno Mars and one of the most successful songs of the past decade.
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